Sometime after two in the morning, Alex woke up to music. He blinked against Michael’s shoulder, forehead tight against the sleep hot skin that radiated warmth against him where they were pressed together. Michael slept on his side, curled toward the window and back to Alex so that Alex could drape himself against the broad warm expanse of his back or roll away when he got too hot, kicking the covers off his foot as he wold pant at the ceiling and cool down. Summers were a sticky mess that they’d compromised on by simply getting a small window unit to blow on Alex’s side of the bed.
Michael was a morning person, but he slept soundly now. In the beginning, it had been fretful, waking at every soft noise and creak in the floorboards, but trust and time had allowed him to slip low into the heavy puffs of breath that kept his mouth loose and hair tangled on the pillow. Alex could curl an arm around his hip, tug him close, and smile against the plane of his shoulder as he mumbled and stilled again. Alex liked the pliant softness of Michael asleep. He liked the golden warm press of his body in the dark. He liked the feel of the crackle of dark hair under his belly button against his palm.
Alex had been in love so long.
The music battered lightly against the window like moth’s wings. It was the gentle pick and strum of a guitar. Alex lifted his head, bleary eyed and half awake with a levidity mark cutting across his cheek. He ducked an absent kiss to Michael’s shoulder and turned, stretching his left foot to the floor and massaging his right knee as he blinked in the dark. Wentz wasn’t at the foot of the bed, the small staircase Michael had built the old girl tucked at the side. She as getting old, white muzzled and hazy eyed as she trundled at a slower pace in a determined line along their walks in the prairie. He considered the prosthetic for a second, frowning at it and the sock before simply reaching for the set of Lofstrand crutches and gripping the palm hold. He pushed to stand, catching his balance in three points before starting to follow the soft tickle of melody.
The song was lovely, lonely and minor key with a soft harmonic tap in the third time trill before rolling back into what sounded like an open D chording structure. It was bluesy, nearly a slide guitar sound with a muffled pick structure. Alex paused at the bedroom door, looking back at where his husband was asleep and taking a moment to find his balance on one foot, twisting into a loose t-shirt over his boxers.
The kitchen was dark, just a small glow from a screen saver on the computer Michael always left open and facing the fridge. He had an office, but did most of his work at the kitchen table, talking out loud in strings of mathematics that Alex would just hum a quiet noise of assent at. He didn’t need to know the work to know Michael was brilliant in a way he couldn’t quite comprehend beyond the way it swelled in his heart to see him lost in the work. It was comfortable now, his genius. Alex had been grateful that his gift for languages and code had been the link to learning the ancient glyph script on the spacecraft, that he’d been shoulder to shoulder with his husband’s greatness when they’d cracked the code and watched the damaged hulk of it shimmer to life. He reached over, closing the lid and tossing the kitchen dark again, eyes adapting to the soft line of light coming from under the guest room door and through the windows in shafts of silver blue.
The crowd had left, each taking a long last look at where the kid had been staring at his fingers where they were stacked flat on the table top. Alex understood the white knuckled panic of found family. He understood the sudden overwhelm of too many questions too quickly. He’d wanted to slip between the silent and over full stares Max and Isobel were giving the kid. He wanted to get between this kid and the world and it had happened between one breath and the next. The kid had tried for cocky. He’d tried to hold his head and his chin up, face the group of people scattered around the kitchen. He’d gone sharp and petulant, sassy and scared.
“How long have you been-”
The kid had dimmed, pulling into himself and Alex watched Michael glare at the group. He’d handed the kid a sandwich and shoved Kyle out of the way so the boy could sit.
“It’s got to be Sabretti.” Liz was shaking her head, trying to mitigate the way she was obviously staring at the kid by snagging a granola bar from the table top.
“She died, what, three years ago?” Max looked to Isobel and then to Kyle for confirmation.
“I know, but she’s the only one that could have pulled this off.” Liz wrinkles her nose. “Bitch.”
“Not a this. I’m literally right here.”
“Yes, bitch, got it. Doesn’t explain the kid sitting at the table right now.”
“She figured it out.” Liz shrugged, talking around the way the kid was going prickly and annoyed. “It has to be her. Her assistant was the reason we had that problem three and a half years ago?” She shuddered and Max touched his tongue to his top lip, nose wrinkling in annoyed memory. “Couldn’t figure out the clo-”
“I couldn’t do it, not without breaking a few international laws and like nine ethics violations.” She got a distant look. “Unless, I had acc-”
“No cloning. We said no cloning,” Kyle muttered from where he’d been rubbing his eyes.
“So, it’s possible.” Isobel’s voice carried over the table and cut into the way Liz was planning things. They all turned, looking at where she was watching the kid with a blank flat look, considering.
“If one more person calls me an it I’m going to flip a table.” The boy grinned, saccharine sweet and sharp. He batted his eyelashes. “Anyone got weed?”
Later, Alex had overheard Kyle talking with Michael in soft tones, arms folded as they pretended they weren’t old friends. They always did this. They always pretended they hadn’t learned to trust one another, to count on each other, to have each others backs through years of experience. It was posturing and Alex would shake his head as Michael and Kyle would stand shoulder to shoulder and pretend.
“He needs a name, Guerin,” Kyle muttered.
“That’s fine for a cowboy, but he’s just-”
“A kid? I know, okay, Kyle? I get it.” Michael paused and wet his lips, talking to the tips of his boots. “I was thinking maybe James.” He sniffed, sucking his teeth and waited. “Jim or Jimmy for short?”
Kyle’s head snapped to the side, staring at Michael’s profile with wide eyes before he remembered himself and swallowed. Alex could see the jump in his jaw and the way he had to take a long slow breath before he bumped Michael’s shoulder softly with his own. “I’m-”
“Whatever, Valenti. Don’t start crying or anything.”
“Jimmy.” Kyle pursed his lips and nodded a few times before slanting Alex a quick look where he was sipping his coffee. “It’s perfect.”
Now, the melody moved fainter as Alex leaned near the guest room door and then louder as he eased through the living room and to the front door. The door didn’t squeak anymore, the whole house carefully maintained by a meticulous man. Alex stepped onto the porch, glancing around and finding the thread of the song. He slipped down the steps and out into a familiar path, the warm summer wind carrying the smoky sweet scent of mesquite cross the ground, the slippery silver green of sagebrush, and the sweet trill of desert flowers blooming in the moonlight. The melody warbled, caught and blown around by the breeze before settling along the creek bed.
The old scrubby oak was still tilted half out over the water, the creek a thin trickle in the summer air. The treehouse had rotted out, fallen down in a storm seven years ago. The steps were still nailed into the trunk, mismatched and crooked. Under the splay of branches were three solid tree trunk stools that were silver smooth, weathered and well used around a fire ring that waited until the drought was over for use. Wentz hopped up from where she’d been laying on her side, tail wagging in a slow back and forth as she trotted to Alex and then back to where she’d sprawled against the kid’s feet.
The music stopped in a clatter, the boy stilling the strings and staring at him with wild frightened eyes in the dark. In the moonlight he looked so much like Michael at seventeen, swaying nervously in the shed while he tracked where Alex was standing, where his hands were, and how to escape if he needed to.
“Relax, it’s just me.” Alex lifted one hand, waving the crutch a little and tilted his head. “You play?”
The boy’s fingers smoothed over the lacquered body like a caress and he watched Alex with dark glittering eyes. “I was going to return it.”
Alex shrugged, non committal and looked up at the sky. The breeze pushed his hair around, flattened his shirt against his front and stroked over his skin. He swallowed. “Michael stole my guitar in high school.” He shrugged. “He told me later he just wanted a reason to talk to me.”
“So you guys are like, together?”
“Like, married.” Alex gave the boy a soft smile and flicked his eyebrows up like a dare. “That a problem?”
“No.” He shrugged, curls fluttering in the breeze before he stroked over the frets and started playing again, fingers deft and easy with practice. “He’s an alien, though, right?”
“A kid with a guitar,” Alex answered, gesturing to the seat next to him. The boy just nodded and shifted slightly to let him pass.
“It’s how I survived,” the kid answered, eyes closing on a sweet trickle of melody and then shivering through a small slide scale into a new bridge. He had deft fingers, picking around something beautiful and easy as Alex settled in to listen. The boy played and it was easy to imagine that they’d been the ones to teach him. It was easy to imagine that he’d been a part of their lives for longer than a day and a half. “That Kyle guy called me Jimmy.” The boy paused, smirk going crooked and heartbreaking. “Like Jimmy Hendrix?”
“Sure,” Alex answered. “Like Jimmy Hendrix.”
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